


he doesn't make me happy (but he helps to still the shakes)

by voodoochild



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Revenge, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:41:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A queen's ascent to power, as seen through the eyes of a king. (Takes place in an AU where Gillian seeks revenge for certain 2.12 events.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	he doesn't make me happy (but he helps to still the shakes)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Boardwalk Empire Comment Ficathon](http://cloudytea.livejournal.com/139537.html). Title and prompt from Dessa's "551".

She sets New York abuzz mere days after she arrives.

He remembers her from years ago, on Kaestner's arm, though if he cared, he could read her name etched across Charlie's back. She'd been far, far too young, and though he'd been intrigued by the flame-haired child who'd dreamed of being a showgirl, there had been a hunger to her that he hadn't understood.

( _Not then_ , he had thought, but his heart tells him _not yet_.)

After her son dies, she tears Atlantic City apart. She splashes the scandal of her and Kaestner and Thompson all over the papers, puts Nucky and Eli behind bars for what's looking to be a very long time. And she doesn't stop there. Word from Waxey Gordon is that she and the soldier had paid a visit to Manny Horvitz, ending in a knife across the throat and his blood spilled all over the floor of his butcher shop. A day later, Mickey Doyle turns up with a bullet through his forehead, and Arnold hears the mutters of his boys.

 _"Gillian finally go off the rails?"_

 _"Wouldn't put it past her, the crazy bitch."_

 _"You think she sliced up Horvitz?"_

 _"Probably let Harrow at him, too. He definitely popped Doyle, that's his work all over."_

She waltzes into the Brook one evening, dressed in green, and proceeds to charm Governor Miller. Arnold watches her spin her web, flitting from the Governor to Bill Fallon to Charlie - whom she leaves with, and who shows up for a meeting the next day covered in bruises and a filthy grin. He doesn't care what she does, who she entraps, as long as she isn't a threat to any of his business.

Until one night and a hotel room. Until he's blurry-eyed and jittery over losing at poker and she's chasing the memory of her son with four too many glasses of whiskey.

Then, it's the burn of her nails in his shoulder and the ring of his fingerprints around her wrists. She begs him to hold her down, fuck her harder, make it hurt, but she's got Charlie for that. Charlie can break her apart, he's good at that - and Arnold tells her so, holding her tight, arms braced around her back as he urges her to ride him.

Gillian fucks like it's the last night of the world, shaking and crying and hair like spilled blood down her back. He quiets her, gentles her, treats her like the breakable thing she is because he doesn't want to see her shatter. He'll piece her back together, because she burns like Charlie and calculates like Meyer and resents like Carolyn, and if he can't be enough for any of them, he might as well be what she needs.

(He never stops to consider that he might be getting hustled himself. Because she's the pulse-racing buzz of a Saratoga race and the eye-watering exhaustion of a marathon game of pool, and he's starting to itch when he doesn't see her for a few weeks. She knows what he is; like calls to like, after all.)


End file.
